


A Bold and Heedless Air

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Gen, Hats and Hardcore Democratic Republicanism, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Courfeyrac has a thought-provoking encounter with Éponine before the barricade goes up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bold and Heedless Air

**Author's Note:**

> Set just after their interaction at Courfeyrac's lodgings, with Éponine disguised, at the end of Book Eleven.

Just as he was on the point of leaving to catch up with his friends in the crowd making for Saint-Merry, Courfeyrac was struck by the inconvenient but incontrovertible knowledge that the hat he had just retrieved from his room was one in which he had been seen on several previous occasions of note, including two operas and at least one _émeute_ , and would not do to grace an event of today’s magnitude. Aware that such considerations might be thought ridiculous by some, he nonetheless turned back, retraced his steps and made another circuit of his room in search of a worthier candidate.

Once more turning to leave, he found that he had been rejoined by the young man who had appeared downstairs in search of Marius, and who now slouched in the doorway of the room, his thin limbs braced against its frame, half in the corridor’s shadow and halfway in light. From under an artisan’s cap he regarded Courfeyrac coolly and curiously, as though they both had all the time in the world to examine each other.

‘Back again, are you?’ said Courfeyrac, his customary mildness taking on an exasperated edge. ‘Only I’m in something of a hurry – ’

Not hearing him, or certainly without awaiting invitation, the youth stepped fully into the light, sauntering into the room softly on unshod feet and taking in its elegant disarray. Seeing his inquisitive glance dart to the ceiling, to the rug, to the bookshelves and surfaces and corners cluttered with papers and abandoned clothing, Courfeyrac found himself calling to mind the street-urchin recently among their number, and the restless, irrepressible spirit with which he had thumped his triggerless pistol on each shuttered window they passed. This youth gave the impression of some questing energy, equally restless but tightly coiled, like a animal recently released from its cage and undecided whether to scurry away or to spring. 

He watched the boy reach out and, in his pale fingers, snatch up a cravat in a deep blue and gold which had been, unaccountably, left draped across the mirror. There was something curious about the way, having thus cleared the mirror of obstruction, he proceeded to look intently at himself in the glass, tilting his head in a half-distracted, half-gratified manner that Courfeyrac was more used to seeing in mistresses than in workmen, however young and fragile-looking –

Glancing around to meet his questioning stare, and with what seemed to Courfeyrac a practiced move, his visitor gave one shoulder a nonchalant twist which let the open neckline of his smock gape wider and slip down almost to his waist. Courfeyrac felt his own mouth gape with almost as little sophistication. 

‘What the devil -?’

With a sudden and rather alarming crooked grin, the youth whipped off his – or rather her? – cap, and, with the triumphant air of a conjuror, shook out her hair, letting it fall in loose, rough tangles down her back between the sharp points of her exposed shoulder-blades. Turning around to fully face her host, she put her hands on her hips and looked up at him with her eyes, hard as flint, lit by a dull but distinct spark of challenge and defiance. 

As amused as he was startled by this revelation and its casual execution, Courfeyrac gave an incredulous laugh and stepped forward to clasp her hands in his.

‘What’s your game, then, Monsieur-Mademoiselle?’ he said lightly. ‘Has someone put you up to this?’

She shrugged, her gaze momentarily guileless, and let go of his hand to pluck almost compulsively at the hem of her smock.

‘No one puts me up to anything, Monsieur. I think I’ve done a good job of this dressing-up, so I wanted to show someone, that’s all. I can always give myself a round of applause, it’s true – but what’s a good turn without an audience to see it?’

Courfeyrac regarded her shrewdly, thinking of the premium he himself was apt to place on costume and performance, and the satisfaction gained when others pay attention to the effort one has made. Leaning back against the wall, he obliged her with a droll but impressed countenance and a burst of applause, as though appreciating a particularly good debating point in the Musain’s back-room or a _bravura_ solo at Le Peletier. 

With a correspondingly wry smile, his guest bowed her head in gracious acceptance and then bit her lower lip, her gaze absent-mindedly flickering between the storm-tossed sheets of Courfeyrac's bed and the austere spare mattress on the floor.

When she raised an arm to push her smock open further across her chest, it was with a listless, near-mechanical action which moved her observer to a mildly embarrassed sympathy before any less chivalrous response could escape him. Courfeyrac was equally cursed and blessed with the conviction that all women have something, however small or singular, to recommend them. Considering this slight and slightly wild-eyed creature in these incongruous surroundings – the knots and angles of her body, her skin grubby with dirt and powdery ash like the wings of a moth, the frayed pink corners of her mouth, and her deep-set eyes with their impenetrable expression – he became conscious of both wit and beauty stunted by circumstance. So many blooms were left to shrivel in thin and ill-nourishing soil, in conditions where nothing can properly flourish when merely to exist is struggle and sacrifice. 

It further struck him that, while she might manage to slip in and out of her female appearance with the ease of taking off a tattered coat, she could not so easily shrug off her poverty. His portress’ earlier address of him by the ‘de’, which constantly needled, was now brought to the forefront of his mind, where it stung more deeply until it seemed an all-encompassing infection, the arbitrary particle an offence in the eyes of the whole world. The lottery that was made of fortune, prospects, health and beauty according to accidents of birth – and the moral judgements made consequently, as though any given individual could be categorised as idle or industrious, virtuous or vicious, depending merely on whether they happened to issue from the ranks of the rich or the poor… these everyday outrages, which Courfeyrac had acknowledged for some time, now appalled him all over again, and made the thought of his impending destination seem all the more urgent.

He said nothing of this to her – it would hardly come as news, he thought, and she would hardly thank him for that sort of well-meant condescension. He had no wish to rescue or deliver her, only to grant her the opportunity to deliver herself. The transformation they were hoping to effect, after all, was in part the overturning of the conventions that immured an individual in the circumstances of their birth, the removal of the idea that one may be only what one is born to.

Once the girl had shrugged herself back into her artisan’s guise, piling her hair beneath her cap, Courfeyrac ushered her decisively into the corridor, closing the door behind them and straightening his hat. As they paused on the threshold of his building, he noticed that she still held the cravat she had picked up in his room. 

Noticing him noticing at precisely the same time, she froze and made a sudden motion as though to hide it behind her back or in a fold of her clothes, and then, apparently thinking better of it, she held it out to him carelessly, her gaze fixed somewhere over his shoulder. As he took it back, seized by an odd impulse, he tilted up her chin and gently wound the silk around the girl’s emaciated neck.

At such close quarters her skin, pallid where not lividly bruised, gave off a feverish heat, and she parted her parched-looking lips as if on the verge of saying something more, though never managing to do so. She returned his nod of playful approval with a grave and steady glance that he continued to find impossible to interpret, as, stepping back, he tied off the cravat with the flourish of a knight affixing a pennon to a lance before battle. 

In unforgiving daylight the gaudy silk at her throat looked both arresting and absurd, and after a moment she shook her head, smiling, and unwound it again, pressing it back into his hands and saying, in her guttural mutter: ‘It’s not something I’ll be needing, I don’t think.’

‘Very well,’ he replied lightly, leaving for a more opportune time his discourse on the perpetual need to have a decent cravat to hand. ‘And now – I've an engagement at the barricades, and I don't wish to find myself unfashionably late. Come after me or don’t, just as you like.’

‘You’ll see,’ she said, with a cryptic look, and went off down the street. 

As a light rain began to fall, darkening the paving stones in front of him, Courfeyrac stood, still chiefly nonplussed by the encounter, and watched her go. Until she rounded the corner and vanished into shadow, she seemed almost to skip, her uneven steps rapid and light with what he took to be the relief, halfway between glee and exhaustion, that comes when some unknown burden is lifted, some message delivered, or some mission, plan, or errand all but complete.

Upon seeing her again, when in a few hours at the barricade what seemed like a lifetime had passed, he thought back to the instant of her hand in his and saw no reason not to keep her secret.


End file.
